Non-volatile memories are used in a wide variety of commercial and military electronic devices and equipment. Embedded flash memory devices are used to store data and executable programs in integrated chips. As the functionality of an integrated chip increases, the need for more memory also increases, causing integrated chip designers and manufacturers to have to both increase the amount of available memory while decreasing the size and power consumption of an integrated chip. To reach this goal, the size of memory cell components has been aggressively shrunk over the past few decades. As the process technology migrates to smaller cell sizes, the integration of floating gate with high-k metal gate becomes complicated and expensive for embedded flash memory. Resistive random access memory (RRAM) is one promising candidate for next generation non-volatile memory technology due to its simple structure and CMOS logic compatible process technology that is involved.
The RRAM cell is a metal oxide material sandwiched between top and bottom electrodes. However, traditional RRAM cells can cause high contact resistance variations at the top electrode via. The current disclosure aims at lowering the contact resistance variation, lowering forming voltage and improving data retention.